Dialogues from Beyond the Grave
And even as he, who, with distressful breath,
Forth issued from the sea upon the shore,
Turns to the water perilous and gazes;
So did my soul, that still was fleeing onward,
Turn itself back to re-behold the pass
Which never yet a living person left.
Dante, Inferno
Chapter 30
ACT 1
Her Women
Nor did You, Lord, when You walked in the world, despise women.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection
They are very womanish…[be] like strong men.
Teresa of Avila, The Way of Perfection
LA MADRE, on her deathbed, watched over by:
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ and TERESITA, La Madre’s niece, Lorenzo’s daughter, TERESA DE JESÚS in religion; with them are
CATALINA DE LA CONCEPCIÓN
CATARINA BAUTISTA
Followed by entrance of:
BEATRIZ DÁVILA Y AHUMADA, Teresa of Avila’s mother
CATALINA DEL PESO Y HENAO, the first wife of Teresa of Avila’s father, Alonso Sánchez de Cepeda
Characters passing through, in alphabetical order:
ANA DE LA CERDA DE MENDOZA, Princess of Eboli
ANA DE LOBRERA, ANA DE JESÚS in religion
ANA GUTIÉRREZ
ANA DE LA FUERTÍSIMA TRINIDAD
PADRE ANTONIO DE JESÚS
The image of the Virgin that Teresa always kept with her. Private collection.
BEATRIZ DE JESÚS, a niece of La Madre
BEATRIZ CHÁVEZ, BEATRIZ DE LA MADRE DE DIOS in religion
BEATRIZ DE OÑEZ, BEATRIZ DE LA ENCARNACIÓN in religion
CASILDA DE PADILLA, CASILDA DE LA CONCEPCIÓN in religion
CATALINA DE CARDONA
ISABEL DE JESÚS
PRINCESS JUANA, sister of Philip II
JUANA DEL ESPÍRITU SANTO, prioress at Alba de Tormes
JERÓNIMA GUIOMAR DE ULLOA
LUISA DE LA CERDA
MARÍA DE OCAMPO, MARÍA BAUTISTA in religion
MARÍA DE JESÚS
MARÍA ENRÍQUEZ DE TOLEDO, Duchess of Alba
MARÍA SALAZAR DE SAN JOSÉ, prioress at Seville
EMPRESS MARIA THERESA of Austria
TERESA DE LAYZ
AN ANONYMOUS NUN
With the portrait of the Virgin Mary bequeathed to Teresa by her mother, whose blue veil casts its iridescence over the deathbed scene.
ACT 1, SCENE 1
LA MADRE
TERESITA
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ
JERÓNIMA GUIOMAR DE ULLOA
LUISA DE LA CERDA
ANA DE JESÚS
and CATALINA DE LA CONCEPCIÓN, CATARINA BAUTISTA
Although La Madre had wished to go up to Heaven in a flash, her niece Teresita will testify that her death was neither easy nor quick. And yet Teresa is not distressed at entering into her final agony. The twilight of her awareness fills her with blue-tinted voluptuousness, blue as the wintry dawn over Avila, blue as the Virgin’s cloak in the picture her mother bequeathed to her before she died.
She knows she’s not alone. Ana de San Bartolomé, the young conversa nun who is nursing her, and Teresita—now in the bloom of her sixteen years—keep watch with tender solicitude by her bedside, accompanied by Catalina de la Concepción and Catarina Bautista. Sounds of padding footsteps, rustling habits, murmuring voices; scents of skin, clean towels, cool or warm water. The dying woman cannot see the faithful companions by her side, but they inhabit her visions.
Is it possible to die, when she is already dead to the world so as to live more completely in God? Teresa thinks death is delightful, an “uprooting of the soul from all the operations it can have while being in the body”; because the soul was already, while the body lived, “separated from the body” in order to “dwell more perfectly in God.” Often, as during those terrible epileptic comas, the separation of body and soul was such that she didn’t “even know if [the body] had life enough to breathe.” Soon, now, it will not. The rest is unknown, something even more fearsome and delightful, since she loves. “If it does love, it doesn’t understand how or what it is it loves or what it would want.”1 The unknown is love. Teresa never stopped wondering about love, and writing about it. There’s no reason to stop now.
The blue Virgin has her hands crossed over her breast, and the face of Beatriz Dávila y Ahumada. With the folds of her azure robe she protects the fortress of Avila, but the Mother of God does not say a word to the dying woman. How long ago did this “mother without flaw” abandon her daughter? Some fifty years?
Teresa sees one of her own texts materialize on the pale silk. To write about the inner life means spewing out “many superfluous and even foolish things in order to say something that’s right.” It required a lot of patience for her to write about what she didn’t know. Yes, sometimes she’d pick up her pen like a simpleton who couldn’t think of what to say or where to start.2 It required patience to get people to read her, and then to reread herself. Torrents of engraved words, funerary columns, whole pages stamped into the translucent walls of the interior castle, which Teresa can retrieve with no help from the “faculties”—whether understanding, memory, or will—it’s just there, just like that. “Hacer esta ficción para darlo a entender”:3 literally, to “make this fiction to get my point across.” “Hagamos cuenta, para entenderlo mejor, que vemos dos fuentes”:4 “Let’s consider, for a better understanding, that we see two founts.” Let’s pretend, pretend to see. Let’s tell stories. Let’s write them down.
TERESA. Converse with God. What else could I do, being a woman and a conversa? (Lengthy pause.) My Lord and Spouse! The longed-for hour has come! It is high time we saw each other, my Beloved, my Lord! (Listening.) Conversar con Dios. Such things can’t be explained except by using comparisons. To grasp them, one must have experienced them.5 (In a rush.) A conversa who wants the world to be saved…with my daughters…After the return of Fr. Alonso de Maldonado from the Indies…Who’d have thought it?…I have been out of my mind…I’m still delirious…the Lord says that I must look after what is His, and not worry about anything that can happen…6 (Quick smile.) The long-awaited time has come!
(Long pause.)
A new page imprints itself upon the Virgin’s blue cloak outstretched over the ramparts of Avila, a page La Madre wrote regarding another Beatriz, a relative of Casilda de Padilla. She’d never met Beatriz de Óñez, or Beatriz de la Encarnación, but had heard much about her God-given virtues from the awed sisters at Valladolid. This was one daughter that Teresa was going to take with her when she flew away from the Seventh Dwelling Places toward the Lord.
TERESA, in a tone of fervid reminiscence. Beatriz, daughter, woman without flaw…Mother…pray God to send me many trials, with this I’ll be content…
As she mutters to herself in this vein, pious Ana de San Bartolomé recognizes the words La Madre had written in a section of the Foundations, glorifying the nun whose “life was one of high perfection, and her death was of a kind that makes it fitting for us to remember her.”7
TERESA, feverishly. Have you asked the monastery nuns? Did they ever see anything but evidence of the highest perfection? High perfection is an interior space free of all created things, a disencumbered emptiness, a purified soul and God divested of all character, dispossessed of Himself, turned in on Himself.
TERESITA, in tears. She’s dreaming…as if reciting something…
TERESA. “She was next afflicted with an intestinal abscess causing the severest suffering. The patience the Lord had placed in her soul was indeed necessary in order for her to endure it.” Just like my mother. It was wonderful to behold the perfect order that prevailed internally and externally, in every way…
But wasn’t her muddled mind confusing Beatriz de Óñez with the nun who had cancer, the one she had cared for when a novice at the Incarnation? Or perhaps with Beatriz Dáv
ila, the mother Teresa pitied as well as honored, but assuredly praised to the skies? She wanted to follow in her footsteps to the Beyond, but by choosing another way of perfection: the monastic way.
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, to TERESITA, interrupting her prayers for a moment. She’s calling on her mother for help before going to join the Lord.
TERESITA. Do you think so? I think she’s seeing her mother in the Lord. She wants to find peace in her lap, to know herself to be perfect, in her and like her.
Teresita surrenders to emotion: for the foundress, her little Teresica, as she called her, was always the impish nine-year-old she welcomed into the Discalced Carmel at Valladolid. Even so, the little one is often more insightful than other sisters about the extremes of mind and body, as she has just demonstrated.
La Madre can barely hear them. Immersed in visions, she continues to murmur the text unfurling across the blue robes of the Virgin above the walls of Avila. Nothing but her text, chiseled into what is left of her body and soul, the second nature etched into her by writing. It takes up all the space of her dwelling places, the whole castle.
LA MADRE, reading. “In matters concerning mortification she was persistent. She avoided what afforded her recreation, but unless one were watching closely, this would not be known. It didn’t seem she lived or conversed with creatures, so little did she care about anything. She was always composed, so much so that once a Sister said to her that she seemed like one of those persons of nobility so proud that they would rather die from hunger than let anyone outside know about it.”8 (Pause.)
Who is speaking? Who speaks through my lips? I know you’re near, daughters, even if I can’t see you with my bodily eyes. I am not yet dead, so there’s no need to weep or to rejoice, it comes to the same thing. I’m thinking, that’s all, dying people do that, didn’t you know? (Pause.) In fact, the approach of death is the best time for the strange activity of thinking by writing. I think, therefore I am mortal; I question myself, I wonder what right I have to see the Beloved face to face. (With fervent reminiscence.) That sister who was talking through my lips, who is she? Or was it me thinking aloud, a witness to my mother’s distress? Me, wrapped in the suffering of Beatriz de la Encarnación?
Although Teresa’s brain is growing feebler, she keeps qualifying everything she says, as she always used to. The coming end merely adds leisure to her lucidity. One can’t approach God with trepidation, one can’t serve Him in despondence.
LA MADRE, reading. “The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior delights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy, but in having our will so matched with God’s that there is nothing we know He wills that we don’t want with all our desire; and in accepting the bitter as happily as the sweet, when we know that His Majesty desires it.”9
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, repeating in simplified form the lessons Teresa has imparted, as she follows the murmuring voice. Now she’s talking about honor, she’s against it, she can’t bear all those people scrambling after it.
TERESITA. At home, she used to accuse my father Lorenzo of doing that. But the honor of Grandma Beatriz, I mean, her flawlessness…I’m confused…
Teresita isn’t sure whether she is supposed to revere the perfection of her grandmother or seek other, happier models. But still, Beatriz Dávila couldn’t have been all gloom, however miserable her life, since La Madre’s mother used to read novels of chivalry, apparently. Fancy that! I’ve also heard that when she was young, Auntie Teresa would get the giggles playing chess!
The dying woman has turned the page. For fifty-five years now, the magic of Beatriz Dávila y Ahumada has been diffracted into a long procession of women who are now filing past one by one, under the closed eyelids of the traveler on her last journey toward the Spouse. They move through Avila’s narrow streets, climb the towers, pop in and out through the gates. The philosopher Dominique de Courcelles, who was no more present than I was at the final days of the future saint, has had the same insight as myself, Sylvia Leclercq, regarding the lifelong hold of the maternal magnet upon Teresa and the powerful way it was projected on her daughters. When La Madre was busy with her foundations she was also exploring the secrets of this relationship, repeatedly testing the proximity she cultivated to her progenitor, as well as the distance she kept from her.
Her “sisters” and “daughters” were not all natives of Avila, except perhaps for María Briceño, teacher of the young lay students at Our Lady of Grace, and Juana Suárez, the dear childhood friend who led the way to the Carmelites; but the nearness of death makes her gather them all together, loved or hated, all of them without exception, in Avila. Time regained unfolds in maternal space.
Doña Jerónima Guiomar de Ulloa opens the procession, dressed alternately in a gold-spun gown and in rags, the way she was on the day she took the veil.
TERESA. Was I mistaken to write that women are more gifted than men at taking the path of perfection?10 On the whole they are…with some exceptions. I like exceptions. Doña Jerónima, you turned your palace into a convent, and you were the first to donate your fortune to sustain the Work. I can never thank you enough, O Lord God, for allowing me to meet this highborn widow, wedded to prayer, who was closely in touch with so many Jesuit fathers…(Gazes at her for a while. Pause.)
We really became good friends when you directed me to your confessor, Fr. Prádanos.11 (Doña Jerónima blushes at the memory.)
(Teresa’s lips, mumbling inaudibly.)
You knew my needs, you witnessed my sorrows, and comforted me. Blessed with a strong faith, you couldn’t help recognizing the doings of God where most people only saw the devil. (Moving lips.)
DOÑA JERÓNIMA, as a loyal disciple. And where even men of learning were baffled, let me remind you.
TERESA. At your home, and in the churches you know, I had the chance to converse with Pedro de Alcántara…(Lips.)
(Smiling.) I must confess, I had something to do with the favors the Lord was pleased to grant you. And I received by that means some counsel of great profit for my soul.12
Doña Jerónima Guiomar de Ulloa goes on her way, all absorbed in her own soul.
Doña Luisa de la Cerda is next in line. Long ago she lavished on Teresa her endearing madness and her jewels; she shared, after all, some of La Madre’s passions and frailties. She too was on excellent terms with some influential prelates, such as Alonso Velázquez who was instrumental for the foundation of the Carmel at Soria. The dying nun is content to smile at this ghost. Her strongest linked memory is the sense of triumph that buoyed the granddaughter of the converso Juan Sánchez in the great city of Toledo: while she was staying, that time, in the opulent palace of Luisa de la Cerda, a violent transport lifted Teresa toward the dove flying over her head. It was quite different from earthly birds—the dove of the Holy Spirit, soaring aloft for the space of an Ave Maria. That jouissance was followed by a deep sense of rest, like the grace accorded to Saint Joseph of Avila himself in the hermitage at Nazareth.
DOÑA LUISA, anxious, dreamy. Will I ever see it again?
TERESA. As I saw it in the city of my ancestors?
Yes, there is the dove again, flying away after Luisa de la Cerda.
Ana de San Bartolomé can only make out murmurs, stray words here and there, she can only follow in prayer: so she invents La Madre’s reverie.13 She imagines it, just like I, Sylvia Leclercq, am doing.
TERESA. And you, dearest Ana, my faithful little conversa…my sweet and unassuming secretary, companion, nurse…You were illiterate when you arrived, and you learned to read and write by copying my hand. Oh yes, I know how strong you are: didn’t you fend off your first suitor by covering your head with a dishcloth? (Leaning back.) I can see it from here, you will be sent to found the Carmel at Pontoise in France, where you will be prioress, yes, absolutely, I can see it all, no use shaking your head. Go and rest awhile, go on, Teresita can look after me very well. You can see that I’m better, God doesn’t want me yet…Run along! Who�
��s this I see coming now?
ANA DE SAN BARTOLOMÉ, hopelessly shy, walks on tiptoes, talks in a whisper. It looks like one of your nieces, Madre…
TERESA. Come forward, then, niece—no, not you, Teresita. It’s Beatriz de Jesús, visiting just in time…You will be appointed under-prioress at Salamanca, my dear. Don’t goggle your eyes at me, I know it, that’s all…You have a lot of nerve, and more importantly the pluck to retort to the pamphlet that Quevedo will circulate against me…My being canonized by Gregory XV, he’ll not begrudge me that, but to be anointed “patroness of all the kingdoms of Spain,” that’s going too far! The great satirical poet prefers the Moor-Slayer…of course, a warrior saint like the apostle James, our Santiago Matamoros, whose help was so invaluable during the Reconquista, cuts a finer swagger than a mousy nun who wasn’t even a letrada! As for the Marranos…no, let’s drop it. Well then, you, Beatriz, will stand up for me, yes you will…Though we saints obviously don’t need that kind of accolade. His Majesty is enough for us, as I have often said…it’s a futile quarrel…You won’t call it a stupid one, but that’s what you’ll be thinking. What a lamentable affair. In the end, Quevedo or no Quevedo, the pope approves the court’s decision…the all-powerful minister, Olivares, was rather fond of me…So were you, dear child…Be like strong men, my daughters! (Smiles.) You understand me.
The silence is suddenly torn by the sound of a woman singing and clapping her hands, Andalusia-style.
TERESA. What a surprise! Who can this be, singing and dancing like myself in younger days?
The voice approaches, to reveal the face of Ana de Jesús.
TERESA. So it’s Ana de Lobera! (Falling into excited reminiscence.) Of course! Come closer, my child! You’ve always been different, Ana de Jesús. A queen among women, go on, don’t look so innocent, you knew you were, in spite of your genuine and heartfelt humility, which I don’t deny! You were the most attractive of all. Yes, plenty of people thought so—my little Seneca, for instance, not to use his real name. (In a jaunty tone.) There are great beauties among the nuns, you know. I have my own views on this. I’ve urged you often enough: be of good cheer, sisters!14 You will all be beautiful and queenly, worthy of the Lord, or almost…For you have to learn how to be cheerful while coming to me “to die for Christ, not to live comfortably for Christ.”15
Teresa, My Love Page 55